2geonomads

Friday 23rd May 2014

Not a great night’s sleep on a very noisy ferry but the breakfast on board is passable and we are soon on our way by taxi to Ancona airport to collect our rental car, a Hyundai with surprisingly limited luggage space.

In one of my less inspired moments I suggested that,instead of driving north immediately we should drive to the town of Macerata to the south-west of Ancona.

The writer in the Rough Guide had described the town as ” a hilltop gem which draws the inevitable comparisons with Urbino”. It is undeniably on a hilltop but that’ s the only part of the description that rings true. It is supposedly an ideal place to wind down in the evenings after exploring Le Marche. Unfortunately, we arrived early in the morning so that wasn’t of much help. Our mood wasn’t helped by the fact that we couldn’t change 400 kuna left over from Croatia into euros as that country is not part of the euro zone. Anyway we do find a coffee bar with good coffee and pastries so  we set off  to the north suitably fed and watered again.

We managed to get a surprisingly good salad lunch at one of the autostrada service areas and after a fairly long drive we arrive  on  the outskirts of the great renaissance city of  Urbino. Time being a bit short to do justice to the city we drive to Urbania over a magnificent mountain road which shows  the scenery of this area at its best.

It was then time to find our way to our agriturismo, Pietra Rosa, where we had stayed a few years earlier. Gail’s remarkable navigational memory ( and for once I’m not being facetious ) brought us to our location where we were greeted by the owner, Mauro , and his scruffy old dog Baoli. Unfortunately, Mauro’s wife Jenny was away on holidays so we  missed out on her creative cooking, using local produce, including  flowers!

On our previous visit G and I had both felt that Mauro could have put in more work on the garden, pool and outside areas but it is, if anything , in a worse state than before.  Moreover, Baoli doesn’t appear to have had a wash in the intervening 3 years.However, the rooms are fine and Mauro , whilst not Jenny, does a fairly respectable job  in cooking the evening meal.

My nephew Andy and his wife Mo arrived to join us for a one-night stay before  flying back to the UK the next day  and as always it’s great to catch up with them both.  It’ s just a pity that  the tyranny of distance  makes these occasions  all too rare. The road into Pietra Rosa is less than perfect and I was blamed by A  and M for  selecting this place . We do have form in this regard as we  had selected  as a venue for my 60 th a farmhouse high in the hills near Florence  accessible only by  a goat track in terrible condition. However, on this occasion I was an innocent party as G had booked Pietra Rosa without any involvement from me.

Before dinner we  sit outside for a while  to enjoy some white and red wine. Andy had kindly brought us a bottle of  very fine Sagrantino Passito, from a grape found only in the Montefalco region of Umbria, I had bought a quality bottle of red in a local bottle shop and John had also purchased a red in Split which Andy quickly described as p.ss. In fact , if anyone had passed this they would have had serious health problems. Nevertheless, J and I manfully  persisted in drinking it as we both hate to see any wine go to waste.

All in all a great time was had by all in this lovely location.

Cheers

The Obese Ferret